Companies still struggle to properly recognize employees – to their detriment
Tracey White: In her presentation to SCNetwork, Sarah McVanel of Greatness Magnified started and ended with the observation “Solution-focused leadership requires the ability to notice the extraordinary things that people do in their ordinary lives.” She focused on delivering actionable strategies that managers and people leaders can practise, and I left the event with this simple, yet vast idea resonating in my mind.
After decades of management theories and leadership development strategies, we still struggle with little things like recognition that can make the difference between engaged and disengaged employees.
According to Gallup, we are faced with the reality that around 70 per cent of employees are disengaged from their work.
The problem is widespread across industries and it’s a global epidemic.
Research from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., tried to quantify it and reckoned that disengagement costs upwards of $200 million in lost productivity annually for a typical Fortune 500 company.
These numbers are staggering. Not only do they represent serious financial loss, but also the human costs are adding up and playing out in numerous ways.
McVanel is one of several speakers at SCNetwork this year who has spoken about the frustration of generation X who are now moving into leadership positions, and the lost motivation of the millennials, who entered the workforce in a period of economic turmoil.
It’s been said that human nature is driven by the desire to be important.
Perhaps we over-complicate people management? Could the answer to engagement be as simple as recognition?
Paul Pittman: Any technique for removing personal bias from a coaching discussion is to be welcomed, and these types of approaches have become more relevant and necessary as we finally tackle the long-regarded-as-inadequate annual performance review.
However, highlighting an individual’s “awesomeness” every time you speak runs the risk of circling the drain of patronization, which will result in less engagement rather than more.
Trying to screen out personal biases is a more rewarding and valuable first step by addressing the request or issue in question with objectivity, while recognizing positively a subordinate or teammate’s hard work, initiative and creativity — however misguided it may initially appear.
Whether this helps improve engagement remains to be seen but it can’t harm. Anything that attempts to represent a lack of engagement in terms of cost is, in my view, imprudent.
Firstly, we never had that advantage or benefit to spend, so it’s hardly a cost; lost potential, added value may be a better description.
Having said all of that, any attempt to measure it is fundamentally bogus. Engagement is a good thing, we know it when we see it, and intuitively we know more is good — but, like a golf game, there is no perfect.
Jan van der Hoop: To your question, Tracey — do we unnecessarily complicate people management? Yes, we do.
It’s made worse by the clutter of snake-oil salespeople making great promises about their systems and products (yes, we consultants own a piece of this) and a lot of well-intentioned but meaningless mumbo-jumbo perpetuated mainly in the areas of leadership development and performance management.
McVanel’s comments reinforced many of the same themes we’ve heard this year: We all (regardless where we sit in the organizational food chain) share a common need — as humans, we crave authenticity, connection, and what I’ll call real-ationships. (I just coined that, and if some consultant or author wants it, I’ll license it).
In this hyper-connected technological world and hyper-lean-and-competitive business context we’ve built around us, we’ve inadvertently starved our organizations of what people crave the most: A connection to something real and enduring.
To echo your point, Paul, I think these approaches are even more relevant in today’s workplaces — connection builds trust, relieves tension and uncertainty, inspires followership, stimulates curiosity and innovation, and releases energy.
And it doesn’t just happen by locking people into a training session for a day.
In my experience, these types of solution need to start with your managers.
Managers need to be wired to do it (you need the right people in roles that manage others — you can’t train authenticity), they must want to do it, you need to help them carve out the time to do it, and they must be rewarded for doing it.
Silvia Lulka: Picking up on Tracey’s comments, that quote resonated with me as well.
We are all good at something, we are all passionate about something, and when both we and the leaders we work with take that lens, we can find the extraordinary.
The other quote that resonated was “My job is to keep the faith while you sort things out.” We’ve all been on both sides of that.
I can clearly recall what those moments felt like, and the impact it had on my performance, when my leaders have had faith in me when I’ve been stuck or when I’ve stumbled.
Likewise, I know I’ve done the same in others. As Paul says, there is no perfect. The next best thing is to focus on how tomorrow can be better than today.
What stood out for me the most though was being coached by McVanel while speaking in a different language.
It showed the value a leader can have by being present, curious and believing in the other person.
Without knowing me, or what I was talking about, McVanel’s solution-oriented questions such as “What do you most want?” and “What is working?” helped me realize something I hadn’t realized before.
Tracey: Yes, Silvia, the impromptu demonstration of coaching technique while McVanel asked questions and you responded in Spanish was one of the most memorable live demonstrations I’ve seen. It clearly showed how simple gestures communicate so much.
We’ve all been told that communication is less about words and more about body language, but to see it in action was very powerful.
It clearly underlined the point about authenticity, recognition and creating “real-ationships” (I stole your word, Jan.).
And Jan, your observations about the kind of business organizations we’ve created are right on target.
Author Daniel Pink has made a handsome living by observing that we humans are far more powerfully motivated by intrinsic drivers and having purpose in our work.
The message is not getting through. Perhaps we are witnessing an historical break point.
Many of the challenges we face in business and society are too complex to be tackled by top-down management systems and bureaucratic organizational structures designed to support mass manufacturing.
New technologies such as social media and economic changes such as global trade are challenging both the system and the structure.
For many workers, the disconnect is too stark and they become disengaged.
Business has spent billions of dollars on leadership development, and yet organizations still struggle to find the right formula to grow leaders.
Harvard University’s Barbara Kellerman observes that historically the trajectory of leadership has been about the “devolution of power.”
McVanel showed us that change starts small. How we behave towards each other matters if we want to engage minds and hearts.
